We combine creative thinking and pragmatic problem-solving to help you make a lasting impact with your critical audience

We create presentations that persuade and reinforce your message.

We offer knowledge based solutions in the presentation domain to fulfill strategic business communication needs of global clients.

We help you deliver compelling presentations by creating engaging experiences for the audience.
Our solutions result in effective visualization of shared information.
Whether you need to simply enhance existing presentation slides or build an all-new interactive Power Point Presentation, we help you deliver an unforgettable and impactful experience to your audience. It will interest and inform them like no other presentation they have seen before.

Strong Value Proposition
Our value proposition is keen understanding of business and the ability to communicate with international or local audiences we help clients deliver compelling and engaging presentation complimented by international standards of design and creativity.

In a time-lapse video, the avid Microsoft Word user replicates the various icons and shows you how it could be possible.

And you thought you knew how to use Microsoft Word…

Presentation by Alex Lundry of TargetPoint.

Event organizers and presenters will love to display twitter feeds that are relevant to them (and which are more specific to events). When twitter was new, a lot of tweets generated during the tech events. But now like Facebook everyone seems to be getting on with twitter.There were only a few options available to display twitter feeds during an event. Visible Tweets comes handy for this cause. With this online application, One can showcase specific twitter feeds on a computer screen, LCD Monitor, Laptop or even a projector or TV. The Man in Blue has created something that organizers will love to showcase.

Integration of PowerPoint with iPad will change the way presentations are shared. Unfortunately the current versions of iPad does not have PowerPoint in it. Also one can't install the PowerPoint for mac in it. In future also we may see a version of Keynote on iPad, but have to still wait to get Microsoft's PowerPoint in it.
But for early adopters still there are some ways to export PowerPoint in iPad compatible formats.

Guy Kawasaki (Born August 30, 1954) is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He is currently a Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures. Here Guy talks about the 10-20-30 rule of Presentations.

Many of the presentation coaches have advised not to use bullet point indiscriminately on every slide. It is believed that the slides with bullet points yield a maximum of 15-25% information recall after five minutes. Imagine what will happen if all the slides have only bullet points.

Also if only bullet points are required then why do we need a presenter?But here is the catch. Not all presentations are accompanied by the presenter. Most of the presentations end up as on-screen presentation. With advancing technology organizations have started using web conferencing to save on time on travel and costs.

Why not use the slide notes?Slide Notes is a tool which is often used only by the presentation developers and presenters to store slide related information. The detailed / desired explanation of the slide is most of the time missing.Moreover when users are going through on-screen presentation they often miss on the slide notes.

While printing slides people tend to select the default option and may not use the slide notes option to print the notes as well.

Whatever may be option, bullet points do work if presented in a memorable manner. Some examples...

Timo Elliott of SAP Web 2.0 has developed an application that integrates PowerPoint with Twitter. This application was developed using SAP Business Objects Xcelsius. To run this application one does not require Business Objects but Microsoft Office 2007 and Adobe Flash.

The usability is not an issue and has wide applications in public meetings where tweets are common. If required, this can be used as a twitter dashboard. There are around 8 modules and can be easily integrated into any deck (depending upon the requirement)

PowerPoint Twitter feedback slides

PowerPoint AutoTweet

PowerPoint Twitter voting — bar charts and pie chart

PowerPoint Twitter ticker bar

PowerPoint Mood meter

PowerPoint Crowd meter

PowerPoint Zoom text

PowerPoint Twitter update bar

TidyTweet has been integrated to moderate tweets. One can remove inappropirate tweets automatically (swear words) or manually.

Please note: sapweb20.com is the personal blog of Timo Elliott and only contains his personal views, thoughts and opinions. It is not endorsed by SAP nor does it constitute any official communication of SAP.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 has been updated in many ways. The ribbon feature, which was first introduced in the 2007 version, is also incorporated in Office 2010. Screen Capturing is also a new feature to PowerPoint which allows users to embed screen captures directly into PowerPoint. Another feature that has been introduced in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 is background image removal. This is a feature which eliminates the use of using photo editing software for the same purpose of removing background images. Artistic Effects is another image based feature which was exclusive to Photoshop and has now been included within PowerPoint application. Users can now add artistic effects such as ‘Pencil effect’, ‘Cartoon effect’, ‘blur effect’, ‘Black & White effect’ among many other effects to any of your image inserted in PowerPoint.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' Blog Hardware 2.0 (ZD Net) has reported that a patch released by Microsoft Windows KB973815/MS09-037 might cause PowerPoint to crash. This will happen if somebody is trying to access DVD content from the PowerPoint software.

Most of the times, the automatic update function in Microsoft Windows is enabled to download updates without prompting. Microsoft's security bulletin does not have any information that this update causes PowerPoint to crash. The issue has still not been flagged by Microsoft. The security Bulletin on Microsoft TechNet doesn't have references to this issue.

Adrian writes;

Well, basically it’s that the new update kills off the ability to embed Mswebdvd.dll into PowerPoint, causing problems. If you already have the control embedded, the control won’t work and it can cause PowerPoint to crash.

Well nobody would have taken this seriously, if this was not reported by a celebrity Tech Blogger. Adrian runs a highly popular blog - The PC Doctor and is also an internationally published technology author. Some of the books that he has authored includes "Build the Ultimate Custom PC", "Beginning Programming" and "The PC Doctor's Fix It Yourself Guide".Click here to read more about Adrian

Custom Animation is a powerful tool in PowerPoint if used in a balanced way. But there are presenters who use custom animation indiscriminately in their presentations. Information Systems Education Journal has just cleared the clouds over the subject. Information Systems Educations Journal has just published a paper authored Steve Mahar, Ulku Yaylacicegi and Thomas N. Janicki of The University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

A research study was conducted to ascertain the effectiveness on custom animation in PowerPoint presentations. The team recorded two PowerPoint presentations which were completely identical. One with custom animation and the other being plain and simple. The students were split in two groups and each of the group sat through their respective versions.

Contrary to the belief, the team which sat through the presentation that didn't use custom animation to show information scored than the other group. Information recall was higher with static slides. Implications of this study goes beyond the classroom and applies to all the presentations that are delivered across target audience groups. The "bells and whistles" do not add any value if they are not used in proper context. PowerPoint by itself falls under a different category. So if developers are trying to equate it with a video then definitely the end output will not yield desired results.

But this doesn't mean that custom animations should be removed from the application. In fact there are far reaching positive implications, if they are applied in right spirit. Many complex models, information systems, data visualization including charts with multi-dimensional data can be explained easily with custom animation. Depending upon the context it has to used in a fair manner.

Example - Consider, one has to show a single dimensional chart with change in values. Instead of using two repetitive slides, one can easily show the change with the use of custom animation. After the Neighborhood Crime Watch was introduced the local police saw a considerable drop in crime rate. The average line along with the the data points can be moved to their respective destination with the help of custom animation.

The moving graphics might be impressive, but fail to increase the information recall with audience. So the next time you are tempted to add a custom animation, think twice before selecting.

This alliance has in fact given a new opportunity for third party developers. DataViz®, the owners of Documents To Go® announced the release of a New version which supports Microsoft PowerPoint on Andriod phones.

The new Slideshow To Go components allow viewing, editing and creating new powerpoint shows on Andriod devices. It also supports files in Office 2007 format. Now business travelers with Andriod devices can effortlessly go through slides, review notes, rehearse timing and make any last minute modifications when on the go.

Free Version for All Android-based DevicesA free version of the application is made available by DataViz. This non-expiring, free version of Documents To Go 2.0 provides all Android-based device users with the ability to view MS Word, Excel files and attachments.

In a statement the company said:

“By introducing a free viewer edition as well as a full version with premium capabilities, we are able to make Documents To Go accessible to all Android device users around the world,” said Ilya Eliashevsky, Product Manager, DataViz, Inc. “With added support for PowerPoint and PDF files, Document To Go is now the most comprehensive Office suite available in the Android Market.”

Barrick Gold Corporation is a large Canadian mining company with operations across five continents. This is not a first of its kind wherein a large corporation has leveraged social media platform for investor communications. Walmart, Omnicom Group, H&M, Verizon are some of the other corporations who have utilized the SlideShare platform.

One can download their previous presentation in PDF format, but the latest one has been uploaded to SlideShare and can be distributed easily. Social Media Optimization is Word-of-Mouth on steroids. Apart from other feel-good things about social media, it hardly costs anything.

A survey conducted by usability expert Jakob Nielsen revealed that Institutional Investors, Financial Analysts and Journalists never rely on financial information provided by the company. They instead use professional services like Bloomberg, Reuters and First Call to download financial data into their modeling tools for further analysis.

However they (including individual investors) often visit the Investor Section to check for latest information disclosed by the company and to understand company’s own story and investment opportunities.

Investor presentations, Earnings updates and conference calls are some of the important elements in any IR section of the website. Most of the companies (especially in the west) use iTunes as a platform for distributing audio files, again it has its pros and cons. With increasing online penetration and bandwidth access, companies can make use of popular social networking platforms to disseminate information.

Investor Relations Presentation:The most common option available is to download file as a PDF or in PowerPoint format.Solution: Apart from this you can upload your presentations to popular presentation sharing networks and then embed it on the webpage. So without downloading any file, the user can go through the information like any other presentation running on the web.Tools: Google Docs, Think Free Office, SlideShare

Earning update conference calls: The most common option available is the transcript, apart from transcript can you give the user a real experience of listening to the audio without any encumbrance. The common option that we see is the ability to download audio files in MP3 format.Solution: Yahoo! Media Player has simplified the process by giving the option of playing the audio file on the web page itself. The best part is, user does not require media player (so issues related to Quicktime, Windows Media Player, Real etc will not arise) a flash based media players plays MP3 file in a simple way.

Investor Presentation videos:It is quite rare that video presentations are made available to users. But with YouTube! you can easily broadcast your IR videos. Just embed the video on the webpage with the help of YouTube and let the user go through it at his own ease.

Companies can go still further and leverage the power of Facebook and Twitter for dissemination of information. But its all dependent on the company’s policy towards social networking that will decide the future. Many large corporations are harnessing the power.

For example: GE makes extensive use of YouTube and Twitter to disseminate information. But still the audio files are available without any player. Financial Technologies has provided the option of viewing the presentation on the webpage itself. But the service is proprietary and there are no real sharing or collaborations tools available for the word-of-month option to happen.

Twitter has taken the world the surprise. At least the cyber world! Everyone is tweeting or atleast have an account. I am no exception (@aravindp)The buzz around this service has been so powerful that some people feel getting missed out if they are not tweeting. But with so many tweets, irrelevant, spam links and unwanted opinions about everything may sometime make feel that its going overboard.

The SuperNews! has created an interesting video, a great story told well..watch this.

Microsoft is planning to launch the web edition of Microsoft Office and Google's doc is becoming popular due to its cloud features. But Google's version of Spreadsheet, Documents and Presentations are still primitive and lack the advance features of Microsoft Office.

Think about this - rather than creating a document and uploading it every time to Google how about tool within Microsoft that automatically synchronizes your documents and presentations. OffiSync exactly does this. They are bringing the power of Google to Microsoft or I wonder the power of Microsoft Office to Google Docs.

With Officsync you can

Save your documents online in Google Docs and access them from any computer.

Access your files from any computer with or without Microsoft Office.

Manage, create and delete Google docs folders right from within Office applications.

Add collaborators as you save your file in Google Docs.

Open any Google Docs file directly from Microsoft Office applications.

Move or copy files between Google Docs folders.

Manage your Google Docs file library just as if it was on your own computer.

Add collaborators to your documents and manage their permissions.

Changes made through Office apply instantly to your Google Docs version of each file.

Find any document based on its content using the powerful integrated Google search feature.

Switch between multiple accounts (Google Docs and Google Apps) to find your business and personal files in seconds.

Communicate with your collaborators right from within your shared document.

Send automated notifications to your friends and co-workers to streamline the collaboration process.

So if you are small business or a group who is not using Microsoft Groove for collaboration, then this could be a good alternative for collaboration on office documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Media is talking about the marriage between Microsoft and Yahoo! but here is someone who has made a match of Microsoft and Google through their respective office application suites.

With Microsoft Office 2007 you can now save your presentations, documents and spreadsheets as PDF files without buying the Adobe PDF Professional or any other PDF printing software or drivers.

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS plugin’s output is of high quality when comparted other free versions. Microsoft is giving this plugin as free of cost. Apart from saving documents as PDF it can save them in Microsoft XPS format as well.Most of the free versions like cute PDF, NitroPDF hhave some issues when they convert presentations as PDF. First of all they are unable to handle transparency of objects. Due to this, visual quality of the presentation considerably goes down. The second important issue that saw was specifically related to page size, they can't identify the page size of the presentation automatically and there is a lot of white space which is left out. These issues have been specifically addressed by Microsoft and it remains my preferred choice for converting presentations into PDFs.

Microsoft's version publishes PDF in two formats, a lighter version for online publishing and a standard version supporting commercial printing quality

Adobe Professional gives the option of securing the PDF document. The user can manage the rights of the document, eg: restricted printing, viewing full screen change of Meta / document properties information. But Microsoft’s plug-in doesn’t include this feature. Unfortunately this plugin does not work for Office 2003.

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

Excerpt from the talk:

Four years ago, on the TED stage, I announced a company I was working with at the time called Odeo. And because of that announcement, we got a big article in the New York Times, which led to more press, which led to more attention, and me deciding to become CEO of that company -- whereas I was just an adviser -- and raising a round of venture capital and ramping up hiring.

One of the guys I hired was an engineer named Jack Dorsey, and a year later we were trying to decide which way to go with Odeo, and Jack presented an idea he'd been tinkering around with for a number of years that was based around sending simple status updates to friends. We were also playing with SMS at the time at Odeo, so we kind of put two and two together, and in early 2006 we launched Twitter as a side project at Odeo.

But, literally in the eight minutes he was talking, there's about fifty tweets that already came on the talk. So he'll see every aspect of the reaction: the fact that Barack Obama is the biggest Twitterer, the fact that it came out of TED ... I don't think there's any other way of getting instant feedback that way.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is well known for his electrifying presentations. Communications coach Carmine Gallo discusses the various techniques Jobs uses to captivate and inspire his audience — techniques that can easily be applied to your next presentation.

WebEx (a Cisco enterprise) is a platform that provides on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and video conferencing applications. But unfortunately WebEx is not a free service and comes at a price. The monthly plan costs $69 per month and the pre-paid annual subscription costs $59 per month. However here is a mash-up that you can use, if you are trying to find an alternative.

Screen Sharing Software TeamViewer (www.teamviewer.com) is free remote access software that lets you share your computer desktop / PowerPoint screen with other participants. This software doesn’t have voice support, but you can use chat service and also it has screen marking tools that you can use.

VoIP / ConferencingSkype (www.skype.com) is a software application that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service, and in some countries to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing.

FreeConference.comReservationless Standard Plan is a free telephone conferencing service from FreeConference.com can be used instantly and securely without the assistance of an operator. The company provides a US Telephone number that other can dial-in. This free service is not extended to other parts of the globe.

sabsebolo.comSabsebolo (www.sabsebolo.com) offers free conferencing facility in India. Users have to dial a local number to get connected. The local numbers are now currently available for Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. So if the participants are from multiple locations then users may have to dial in a STD number

Fonts play an important role in successful communication. People have their preference for fonts, so most of us make this common mistake of choosing a favorite font for PowerPoint when we know that, it could be shared with others in orginal .ppt or .pptx format. If you share your presentation slides in PDF format, then it doesn't matter as to what font you use.

San-Serif fonts are recommended for PowerPoint slides. Serif fonts have a long history; they are popular since the times of Gutenberg. They were designed to be used in documents with lot of texts. Serif fonts are considered to be easily readable at small sizes as well. Over a period of time designers have come up with a lot of fusion fonts that combine features of both serif and sans-serif fonts. But it is always recommended to use "Safe-Fonts". If you are going to share the presentation deck with colleagues, friends or participants in editable format (.ppt / .pptx or .pps / .ppsx) file format then it’s better to use the fonts that are also available with them.

For example if you are using Gill Sans MS as the font for your slide, then the slide will look different in your colleague’s computer if does not have the said font installed on the computer. Following are set of default fonts that you can choose from.

Choosing a "Safe-font" for your presentation will ensure that it looks same in all the computers (in open format). If you choose to share your deck in .pdf format, then any font will make no difference.
But the type-face is still a big question.

We create presentations that persuade and reinforce your message.

We offer knowledge based solutions in the presentation domain to fulfill strategic business communication needs of global clients.

We help you deliver compelling presentations by creating engaging experiences for the audience.
Our solutions result in effective visualization of shared information.
Whether you need to simply enhance existing presentation slides or build an all-new interactive Power Point Presentation, we help you deliver an unforgettable and impactful experience to your audience. It will interest and inform them like no other presentation they have seen before.

Strong Value Proposition
Our value proposition is keen understanding of business and the ability to communicate with international or local audiences we help clients deliver compelling and engaging presentation complimented by international standards of design and creativity.

Templates form the foundations for any professional deliverable, the content on each slide is critical to effectively deliver your message. Rather than creating information slides with plain bullet points, the approach of building storyboards for presentations is highly effective. Compelling stories include details of time and place, helping the audience situate themselves in the setting in which the story takes place. When suggesting a solution or product, it is important to understand the overall environment, in which the services / products will be used, or key concept around which whole presentation is revolving. The story should accurately reflect issues that arise in the real world.

Any presentation should focus on meeting the 3 point goals to deliver results.

According to a study by InternetWorldStats, India will takeover china interms of Population.There are multiple theories in Econmoics about Population and the recent increase in the world population has been caused due to the following major reasons:

The increase in birth rates due to medical improvements

The decrease in death rates due to better medical facilities and advancements in the field of medicine.

Immigration to better developed countries due to several reasons like better job opportunities, war, and natural causes like hurricanes, earthquakes, and so forth.

According to BridgePort University.

Some of the reasons for this population explosion are poverty, better medical facilities, and immigration from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and Nepal.The population density of India in 1996 was about 287 persons per square kilometer Several solutions to decrease the rate of population increase have been tried by the government, some successful, some unsuccessful.

Although the rate of increase has decreased, the rate has not reached the satisfactory level yet.The population in India continues to increase at an alarming rate. The effects of this population increase are evident in the increasing poverty, unemployment, air and water pollution, and shortage of food, health resources and educational resources.